My bracket is filled out… and I know you didn’t pick my finalists…

Last night, I downloaded my bracket from NCAA.com.  I looked over everything – every team, every permutation, every possible matchup.  I knew that the top four seeds wouldn’t survive game after game – that there were upsets to be upsetted.  For sure.

But, one by one, I filled in my bracket.  And I’m pretty sure that no one has picked my finalists.  And I’m dang sure that no one has picked my winners.

Yeah, I picked some upsets, but not too many – when you’ve got a 27-4 team facing a 25-6 team in an early round, there’s really no “upset” to pick.  And sometimes it’s a coin flip – toss the coin if you’re not sure, then write down the team that lands heads or tails.

So you wanna know who my finalists are?  You wanna know if you can beat me in this annual battle of March bracketology?

Okay.  Here’s what I have.  I’m going with Seton Hall facing Ole Miss, and Washington against Tennessee – with Tennessee and Ole Miss in the finals, and the Volunteers taking the big win.

And you’re looking through your NCAA tournament brackets right now and saying, “Hey wait a minute, I don’t see those teams anywhere.  Chuck, what are you doing?”

Simple.  I’m playing the NIT bracket.

That 27-4 team against the 25-6 first-rounder?  That’s Oral Roberts against Nevada.  Oh, and I also have a 21-13 Marshall squad going up against a 25-6 Middle Tennessee State team.  Won’t matter who I pick in this round, they’re going to get clobbered by Tennessee in the next round.

That’s right, your man is filling out his bracket for the 2012 National Invitation Tournament.  Or as it’s been derisively called, the “Not Invited Tournament” or “The battle to be known as the 69th best college basketball team in the nation.”

Here’s the deal.  I stopped filling out NCAA Division I brackets years ago, partially because I found it offensive that the NCAA would often force the two HBCU’s that won their conferences to participate in a “play-in” game, as if they weren’t “Division I-enough” for the NCAA.  I also got tired of the major conferences whining and kvetching about any mid-majors that scored an upset or knocked the seventh team out of the Big East out of the tournament.  Waah, waah, whine, moan, grumble, gripe.

And I couldn’t fill out the brackets for the Division III basketball tournament – because I would only have done that had my alma mater, Hamilton College, made the tournament this year.  See, back when I was a student, Hamilton didn’t participate in any postseason competitions that started seven days past the last regularly-scheduled season game.  So we could participate in the New England Small College Athletic Conference tournament – which we often won – but because we were a member of NESCAC, our postseason ended after we participated in the NESCAC tournament.  That changed about ten years ago when Hamilton was part of the Liberty League; we then not only participated in the NCAA Div III tournament, but we often made it through several rounds.  And by the way, did you know that one of the teams in the NCAA Div III Final Four is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?  That’s right, kids – MIT is in the Final Four in a basketball tournament.

So what does that leave for me?  Well, it leaves the NIT.  And, in essence, it’s the last chance to actually challenge myself in picking a true winner of a basketball tournament – an opportunity to pick from 32 different college basketball programs, without dealing with superteams from Duke or Syracuse or Kentucky or the like.  It’s closer to what we all want a college tournament to be – for the love of the game and for the love of the sport, with pure competition and athletics – more so than the overbloated NCAA Men’s Division I tournament.

Besides, how many of you Siena fans recall that glorious tournament in 1994, when Doremus Bennerman scored 174 points in the tournament, including notching 51 points against Kansas State, as Siena played in the Final Four and secured a third-place finish – while dumping Georgia Tech and Tulane and Bradley along the way? Or that time in 1991 when they beat Fairleigh Dickinson and South Carolina, and came within an eyelash of beating John Calipari’s UMass team?  You cared about the NIT back then… so why not care about it now?

So if you really want a true basketball challenge, and if you really want to test your bracketology skills – and you’re sick of the receptionist winning the tournament every year – then download the NIT bracket and see if you really CAN pick a winning bracket.

Besides… I got this feeling that we’re gonna hear chorus after chorus of “Rocky Top” at Madison Square Garden when the Volunteers win.

I’m just sayin’, is all…